Hope Is A Verb - When the Taliban Banned Girls From School, SOLA Kept Teaching

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Five years ago, the Taliban banned girls from the classroom. One school refused to stop teaching. In August 2021, as the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, the staff and students of SOLA, the country’s first and only boarding school for Afghan girls, managed to escape to Rwanda, where they established a temporary campus to continue classes.   Meet Shabana Basij-Rasikh, co-founder of SOLA, and our very first guest on this podcast when we launched in 2023. Five years since the Taliban takeover, Shabana returns to reflect on what has happened since: from Afghan women running secret schools and girls rationing internet data to keep learning to what has become of SOLA’s first cohort and what it means to create a place where Afghan girls have the freedom to simply be  “girls who go to school.” In this episode:Why Afghan women are continuing a generations-long tradition of secret schoolsHow the internet has become a lifeline for girls and women inside AfghanistanWhat happened to the first cohort of SOLA girls How SOLA built a permanent new home for Afghan girls in RwandaThe importance of giving girls the safety to be normal teenagersWhat five years of exile, education and resistance can teach us Why Shabana’s message to the world is simple: “Don’t look away.”Help keep the doors open for Afghan girls:👉 Learn more about SOLA👉 Donate to SOLA👉 Explore SOLAxTimestamps:00:54 Introducing the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA)03:10 What hope means to Shabana Basij-Rasikh05:07 The legacy of Afghan women and eduction08:43 Why the internet is a lifeline for Afghan women and girls13:10 SOLAx - the online school18:04 An update on the students of SOLA21:45 Midpoint Reflections23:17 SOLA has finished construction on a permanent campus in Rwanda27:43 The power of partnerships29:50 The relationship between SOLA and Rwanda32:18 What the students of SOLA have taught Shabana35:40 How the story of SOLA expands what's possible38:31 Final ThoughtsAbout Fix The News:Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.Subscribe & follow:If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.Production credits:Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-RoseProduced by Fix The NewsAudio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That! This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.

I speak with a lot of Afghan women who say I'm so tired of being resilient. I don't want to be. I want to be a normal person. And these girls, they're so incredible in holding the nuance. Their circumstances are so complicated and they're striving for that normalcy. They're very outspoken and I love that about them because it means we have been successful in creating a safe space in which they can be normal teenagers. Welcome to Fix the News. I'm Amy.

I'm Gus and these are stories from the front lines of progress. Gus, you know how I love to divide things in life into seasons and cycles. You love to organise things together. I know. I have to say that today's episode really feels like coming to the end of a season. because Shabana Basharashik, who we are speaking to, she was our very first guest on this podcast back in 2023. I remember our very first podcast. We've traveled a very long way,

but far more importantly, she has traveled a really, really long way. For anybody who doesn't know Shabana, she is the co-founder of Sola, which is the School of Leadership, Afghanistan. It's the country's first and only boarding school for girls. And in August 2021, when the Taliban swept in, somehow miraculously, Shabana and her team managed to evacuate 250 students and staff through those crazy airport scenes. And they took refuge in Rwanda, where they set up the school and continued learning. We've just passed the five-year anniversary of Afghanistan being taken back by the Taliban.

is a difficult thing to think about. There are millions of women and girls in Afghanistan right now who are living under the most extraordinary repressive regime. One of the worst human rights abuses in the world at the moment. And yet, in and amongst that, I also think that it is so important to keep our attention focused on people who are fighting back against that

and to focus on the tiny pools of light in and amongst that horrendous story. And Shibana and Sola and Sola and the entire team around them and the hundreds of girls who have now graduated from that school for the first time, they represent something. I think the other thing that I find really striking

is in the three years since we last spoke to Shabana, how little has changed for women inside Afghanistan and how much has changed for these students of solar? You were our very first guest on this podcast three years ago. And at the end of that conversation, we asked you a question, what does the word hope mean to you?

And you said that hope is a reminder. Has your answer changed over the last few years? Yes. Well, first of all, it's so nice to be back and speaking with you. I was in conversation just this morning with an Afghan woman in Kabul City. She was in ninth grade when Taliban took over.

Not only was her own education disrupted, but as she's been finding ways to continue with her own education, she has started an online school. She has 200 plus students. She runs a network of volunteer teachers who get online to teach her students, and she reached out for advice. And we had a great conversation

about what she's doing and what next steps might look like for her. And so I walk away from these kinds of engagements with Afghan women, whether they're inside Afghanistan or in Afghan diaspora communities, with so much hope. And so I would say, you know, for me, hope as a reminder, yes, but what I will add to it is, especially these days, it is directly linked to the actions taken by Afghan woman. I mean, that just speaks to the power of the work that you have been doing,

that there is a young woman who is still at home and still taking this extraordinary risk and so much courage to do what she's doing. How does that make you feel? It's so much bigger now than just one school. Yeah, and, you know, in a way, it's always been so much bigger than the work we were doing. I've heard many times in my interactions with people outside of Afghanistan who have said something along the lines of you're

so brave, you're so courageous. It's not easy for me to just take that as a compliment accepted. And I don't think it's just a woman thing for me. I've especially made a point of since Taliban took over again describing myself as a product. of the historic bravery of Afghan women. I was talking to a group of Sola students yesterday about this. Some of them were asking me why I do this work with the consistency that I've been doing this. And I told them the answer is quite simple.

What choice do we have? And I think back to being a young girl in Kabul when, and living under the first Taliban regime when education was banned. And we had these brave Afghan women. who took enormous risk to open secret schools, underground secret schools, most often operating them from their own homes, from their living rooms, meaning inviting risk to their entire family so that they could educate girls.

And so I am a product of that bravery that is historic in Afghanistan. So yes, is the only legally operating. boarding school for Afghan girls that exist anywhere in the world, and we are operating from Rwanda. But that doesn't mean we're the only one doing this work. Over the past few years, I've had this incredible opportunity to support other Afghan-led organizations through a direct partnership with Melinda French Gates. And I've come to learn about incredible work that's being done both inside Afghanistan and in Avan-Despers. communities by Avons themselves and others who are not from Afghanistan but are focused on serving

off on girls and women. That's great because we can't do enough of it. We can't still reach all the girls. There are millions of girls who are out of school and yet even collectively we're reaching thousands and not the full extent. I engage with women who operate secret schools or online schools, a lot of them who literally lost their home or pushed into a life of exile, took a bit of time to pick themselves up literally from the ground and not only start a life for themselves, but really continue to focus efforts and bring attention to what's happening in Afghanistan. Shabana, I'm really interested to know how online learning is able to.

to shift and change the way that this resistance is operating. I call it a resistance, you know, intentionally. It's not a resistance in the kind of way that we might think about it from classic war movies or something, but it is a resistance in its own way and in its own form. How important is online learning in that? Can you give us a picture of this constellation of organizations of people both within and outside Afghanistan?

And obviously I understand there's some sensitivities there. But for our readers who haven't maybe thought about, or heard about what's happening in Afghanistan for many years. It'd just be great to get a bit of a picture. Today, the ability to get online is one of the very few lifelines that remain for Afghan women and Afghan girls and especially for activists and for, yes, leaders of this resistance. We saw lots of women in Afghanistan who, right after Taliban took over poor

into the streets of our cities, not just Kabul City, but across the country, demanding their basic human right and their Islamic right to education and to work and safety in public spaces. And then we also saw that they were targeted and they were assassinated. Their bodies appeared in dumpsters. Their families were threatened. And it didn't deter these women. Like they knew they were fighting for a cause that is much bigger than them, individually. And in some cases, they became quite smart. They took that resistance into their

homes. They utilized safe strategies like wearing masks to conceal their personal identities, but then they started protesting from their own living rooms. And the only way they could do that was because they had access to the internet. I had a chance a few years ago to address the a UN Security Council. And I was asked for my recommendations. And I intentionally kept it pretty simple. And that was to keep the internet on in Afghanistan. No matter what happens, just do that.

And in doing that, you allow space for Afghan leaders, local leaders, entrepreneurs, creative thinkers, to come up with that local solution for the issue. were facing. But we also saw, unfortunately, a year ago, a total internet blackout and shutdown of telecommunication and internet sources in Afghanistan that lasted about two days. I'm afraid that's not going to be the last time Taliban are going to make such an attempt. I'm really concerned about that because today you see girls who are from all over Afghanistan and are finding their way to,

they're learning English from AI. They're learning English from watching YouTube. They're saving money to be able to afford data packages to get online so that they can study. And I've spoken with girls from Afghanistan who tell me I'm 13 years old today and I'm studying online. I'm going to secret schools.

I'm going to whatever tutoring centers that I can access. But I know that when I am 17 or 18, I want to go to college and university. And I know I cannot do that in Afghanistan. And I know that everything I'm studying online today will not be accredited for me to use to go to university. And this one girl from a rural part of Afghanistan told me a 13-year-old, she said, you know, I have found myself an American teacher who is working with me on getting my GED certification. For those who are not in the United States, GED is the equivalent of getting a, for non-traditional age students, getting a high school degree and diploma to then allow people to go on to colleges and universities. And so if you think about it, the resourcefulness of an avon girl who's 13 years old today,

who then figures out a way to get GED certification for US so that opens up her opportunities to apply for universities globally. I talk to girls who literally ration getting online, turning on data to then check what's up for educational resources and then turn it back off so they don't waste it. it is so important to protect that safe space for girls and women. It frightens me when I think about what Afghanistan can be like without girls and women being able to get online.

I really want to hear a little bit more about Solar's kind of role in all of this, and specifically about SolarX, your own contribution as a school to these online learning efforts. And when we spoke to you in 2003, I think SolarX was still a 20th. twinkling your eye. By 2023 was a bit more of a more than a twinkling our eyes and issue and also in the eyes of my co-founder and partner who really was instrumental in launching this. As I mentioned back then, too, it was really driven by what we anticipated initially and then what really came true. When we were in Afghanistan, the highest number of application that we received was close to 300 for 20 or 30 spots. If I recall, I was a, we were in the

midst of an admission season when I spoke with you. And by a time we finished that admission season, we received 1,950 application for 20 to 30 spots at that time. Since then, it went up to 300 application in the past two years, including this year, we have received more than that. than 5,000 application from avon girls all over the world for less than 50 spots in our campus. We knew that it was going to be a matter of time before we received way, way more application than we have that capacity to admit. And that this is so painful to essentially say no to more than 99% of the girls who apply to us.

at a time when there aren't that many alternatives that Sola is this path for a completely different life. We were looking at, okay, if we can't bring every avant-goro to study at Sola in Rwanda in our boarding school, how can we bring Sola to them? And really the creative challenge that I put forward to the team was, Let's imagine creating an experience for an avant-girl who has to borrow a smartphone,

either from her father or family members, older sibling, or from a neighbor, let's say, for 30 minutes, 30 minutes every day or 30 minutes once a week. And then, most critically, make sure that when she has that smartphone in her hand for those 30 minutes, that she doesn't drain all the data so that she continues to have the ability to borrow that smartphone. And in that process, create and preserve her own space,

classroom, school environment on that phone, even if that phone doesn't belong to her. And so that's how SolarX came about. It's a completely WhatsApp-based, self-paced, asynchronous online platform. And we launched SolarX in March of 2024. And now a little over two years later,

we have more than 40,000 learners on the platform. 85% of these learners are inside Afghanistan, and the other 15% are in Avondasper communities across the world. And consistently, 70% of them are girls and women and the rest are boys and men. With SolarX, it's completely self-based. And whenever the learner gets online, lessons are triggered by the learner themselves. And what we have seen from the learners who consistently return to SolarX to request lessons, when they do that, the completion rate is over 95 plus percent.

Wow. And that's not just a one-time click or download. They request a lesson and we send it in micro doses. All of that happens within WhatsApp. So we are very intentional about making sure it doesn't drain data. And so even with all that is wonderful about SolarX, we're the first to acknowledge that this is not a replacement for any classroom learning. It should never be that. you know, we all learn globally through COVID, how critical it is for young people to be in classroom

with peers. And so in an ideal world, solar X will be a supplementary product. But right now it isn't. In most cases, for a lot of these girls, it's the only hope they have to continue some form of learning. Shabana, when we last spoke to you, the school had been in Rwanda for about 18 months. So it was still quite new. And I'm really interested to catch up on what has happened to that first cohort. So that first cohort that left their home, left their families, how are they going? Thank you. You know, they're now young women who have moved on.

They are pursuing higher education and some of the best institutions, globally. And for security reasons, I won't go into more detail than that. But they're all thriving academically, socially. They're studying neuroscience and computer science and political science and astrophysics and art. And they have such varied interests and passions and what they're pursuing. And they're big dreams. A great number of them are working for humanitarian organizations. helping with refugee resettlement in different places. Some of them work for international tank tanks or in the financial industry. I recently attended one of our graduates' wedding.

These are moments of really important milestones in their lives. You know, they graduate, they get their first jobs, they get their first car, they get married. What was so heartwarming when I attended this wedding, was to see how many Sola girls showed up. Exactly what I had imagined when, as we were thinking about this Sola sisterhood, what does it mean for these girls to show up for one another? One of the things that they share is that the last time most of them saw their families

was back in August of 2021 when we evacuated. from Afghanistan. And so the closest thing they have to family, they have each other. And they are really strong in that sisterhood. And one of the things that I draw so much inspiration from is that their sisterhood is so unique. They are avon girls from all over Afghanistan. They are Tajiks and Uzbeks and Hazaras and Pashtuns and then religiously they are Sunnis and Shunis and and Smileas. And for them, it's not the lens through which they look at each other. They just treat each other as sisters. And then they understand each other far better than anyone else. And they're so aware of how fortunate and lucky they are to be continuing with their education

to this level when most of them have, you know, forget about friends. They have biological sisters, whether those sisters are older or younger than them, who don't have the same path or opportunities. They live with their guilt, but then beyond that, they've taken action to start their own online tutoring programs to help other Afghan girls inside Afghanistan. They want to be helpful. They want to do things to help people in Afghanistan from afar. For me, they are hope.

They are hopeful the future of I understand. This is exactly what that team fought for, right? They fought for the right of these girls

to have a normal life where they get to fulfill their dreams, where they get to pursue different career opportunities, where they can choose to get married if they want to.

To finally have some of those girls graduating and stepping into life I think just is an amazing moment. There's also this incredible threat running through the story of Solar. You know, Shabana spoke about the teachers that educated her at great risk through the First Taliban regime that inspired her to start this school.

And now the students of this school are educating and working toward the education of another generation of girls. There's this incredible, beautiful shining baton that is just been passed from one generation of girls. Afghan women to the next generation of Afghan women. I think that's true. But it's not a batonnet, it's a flame. You know, it's that quote from Buddha, you know,

one flame lighting another flame doesn't diminish the flame that it was lit from. And when you think about that as a light being passed on, that is hopefully, eventually, one day may be a conflagration that shifts things back again. Yeah, it really is the long arc of hope. Five years ago, you were evacuating a school, and today, pretty soon, you're about to open the doors of a permanent campus. How does that whole process feel starting to put down real roots? Yeah, you know, when we initially left Afghanistan, we left with the intention of returning within a year or two. At the time, we were planning our departure.

none of us in our wildest imagination thought it would be possible for Taliban to take over that quickly or to take over at all. And yet they did. And from the time we left Afghanistan to when we arrived in Rwanda, our reality had changed just dramatically. And we knew there was no going back,

at least not for now. and that we needed to adjust to this new reality and this new thinking. And we are quite fortunate to be in Rwanda because it has consistently been an incredibly generous host country. The treatment has been nothing but with absolute compassion and dignity and absolute respect for our autonomy and privacy as an institution. dealing with young Afon girls. In 2023, we were able to purchase a plot of land outside of Kedali. And we really got into an intentional design process with our entire community, especially with our students and our alumni, imagining not just building a campus for a boarding school, but building a home for Afon girls in Rwanda. what that felt like.

And when I initially was speaking with our architects, I asked them something very simple and said, in this village where we're about to build our campus, I want the exterior of our campus to not look like a alien ship that is dropped into this village. It has to look like Rwanda and match our surrounding. But the interior of the building should look like and feel like Afghanistan, upon homes, and upon school.

And it's fair to say that they've been pretty successful in delivering on that. We launched the construction of our campus in February of 2025, and you've just completed. This is a big moment for our community in terms of anniversary. It's a dark one, five years since Taliban will have taken over. but for us it's about reclaiming of what that means for our community. This campus isn't just a boarding school for girls from Afghanistan. It's a home for Avran girls. It's our HQ for this movement of educated Afghan women.

It is that very physical space through which Afghan women's resistance and much more than that will be nurtured. for years to come. I am really grateful and excited for our community to have this opportunity to look at this as their home and not just wait for a time when they can safely return to Afghanistan, but actually work towards creating that time when we can safely return to Afghanistan. And I know they will. There's one thing that I'm very sure of, and that is,

while time has passed, but the anger inside of women and girls, I can certainly speak for myself. It hasn't lessened. It has actually, with time, gotten stronger and bolder. And I know that collectively what all of us are feeling and how we're being treated will put an end to the very ideology and policies that is completely dismissive of. girls and women in Afghanistan. The other thing I was really curious to hear about is who's involved in this, who's helping out? What does the kind of ecosystem of support around you kind of look like? Because obviously nobody does this alone.

Yeah, I mean, I think there are some partners we can easily acknowledge publicly. And then there are other partners for the safety of our community and students and their families we can unfortunately acknowledge publicly. one partnership that's been so critical is the international organization for migration. That's IOM, UN agency. And really, it's through that partnership where we have a UN staff member that chaperones are admitted students all the way to Rwanda. So these young Avon girls don't cross international borders alone or by themselves

that they're really supported through a very well-staffirmed. refugee movement system, even though these girls technically aren't coming to Rwanda's refugees, but we are able to, through this partnership, bring them to Rwanda safely and securely. I earlier talked about a partnership with Melinda French Gates, who reached out to me and asked if I would partner with her in dispersing some funds to organizations that are focused on girls and women and their safety and health and well-being. And I've been able to really get behind the work of so many of other avant-facing organizations in particular who do amazing work.

And then also I'm so grateful to you for your support. We've got so many Kindles that are absolutely wonderfully used by our students loaded with a robust, library of books that, and a library, by the way, which we had to rebuild after losing the one that we built, primarily focusing on a physical copies of books in Afghanistan. And it's a lifeline for our students. I would love to know now what the kind of integration into wider Rwandan society looks like. You know, what is happening at the edges between the school and the village. Can you describe what that looks like and how what's happening that solar is now starting to

filter out into wider Rwandan society? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our girls are competing athletically with partner schools. They're building deep friendship and sisterhood with other Rwandan girls from peer institutions. We have this really important tradition on campus, and that is every morning starts with a morning assembly. It's always been led by our show. students. And for the longest time, it started with our students reciting 99 names of God and doing the, citing the Afghan National Anthem and then their very own Sola pledge, which every sentence of this pledge is recited in a different language spoken in Afghanistan. But all of the students collectively in one point. And since then, what's been added, which I find,

just so, so beautiful, our students sing the Rwanda National Anthem with so much pride and love for the country and gratitude for what Rwanda means to them. And it's really quite powerful. They're very aware of what Rwanda has to offer to them as Afghan women, and that's freedom and safety. And they're the ability for them to be normal girls, girls who go to school. And so it's really beautiful to watch them go out safely and very happily. And whether they go out as young teenagers shopping or hanging out safe public spaces or on educational trips or they go rock climbing or they go rock climbing or they, go for a run. It is a big deal to be an Avon girl today and then to come to a country where

you feel absolutely safe. They don't take it for granted. I can feel the power of that as you are talking about it. Shabana, what have these girls taught you? There are many times when they have humbled me. They are such powerful. reminders of what it means to be resilient and normal at the same time. Because I don't necessarily look at resilience to be a normal state for any person. It takes a lot. And I am intentional about it because I want to be mindful that we are not romanticizing a population's resilience, you know.

I speak with a lot of Afghan women who say I'm so tired of being resilient. I don't want to be. I want to be a normal person. These girls, they're so incredible in holding the nuance of their situation, that their circumstances are so complicated, and they're striving for that normalcy as individuals. And it's beautiful to watch that. They're so hardworking.

They're so focused. They're very outspoken, and I love that about them. I absolutely do, even at times when it sounds like appalling, but I love that they speak of their mind. And there are moments when being just a normal teenager just comes out. And I love that, you know, they're cheeky, they're funny, they're troublemakers. and even though I know in the moment it is a lot for my colleagues to deal with, but I love that they're troublemakers because it means we have been successful in creating a safe space in which they can be normal teenagers.

It is perhaps difficult for us to think about and to fully understand being in a situation when you have to choose between two things that you wouldn't often think about choosing between. For instance, continuing to study or being with your family. And that's exactly what these girls are doing. And that's exactly what their families are doing. In most cases, these girls are so young

when they leave their families. And yes, it's hard, you know, being away from family. missing home, but they understand deeply what it means to gain something. You have to lose something. And that's how they're talking about, what it means to sacrifice something in order to gain something. And they put such important state and their families on their access to education. I often think about how many people would make.

similar choices as these families and these girls do if they were tested in their ability to access education and so that I find so powerful. Shabana, I can see that the internet is starting to fade a little. So I just have one more question for you. What does the story of solar tell the world about what's possible? I think quite simply that anything is possible. You know, if you look at Solar's trajectory, there's nothing that can get in the way of Solar's mission. Solar's mission was, is, and always will be,

to educate Avon girls. And we have so much work to do. We have so much work. In between the two Taliban regimes, we had this moment, these two decades of such enormous possibility, and yet still it was quite difficult for the majority of school-age girls to be able to go to school. And so even then, our mission was so urgent to normalize access to quality education

for all avon girls. And we were on that path, and yet the last thing we imagined was that it was going to get so much harder than it already was. and yet it did. The impact of that wasn't, let's just put an end to this, because there isn't really any possibility to do this in the country. But we pivoted. We became a school in exile.

We then look at the interest and the demand, and the response was, let's start an online academy to try to meet some of this demand. And now we have more than 40,000 learners. And that's just, that's going to be a completely different number in a couple of months. If you continue the progress of So lax. And now we're looking at ways that we can do more to strengthen this global movement. While Solas work is so urgent, so important, we're not doing this alone. There are other organizations that are working in Afghanistan or out of state.

outside of Afghanistan to support efforts in Afghanistan. And it is so important to keep this ecosystem alive and nurtured because it does work towards a different and a better up onistan. We're driven by that. Every member of our community, whether that's our school leadership, our faculty, staff, our students, our alumni, their family members, it's important that we continue this work. to me is the best way I can hold on to hope. I don't have enough words to describe how this story sits in me and what this story makes me feel.

The first time we spoke to Shabana, I was just so gripped by this idea of evacuating an entire school community of these parents that handed over their daughter with hope for a better life. And this time around what I've walked away with is how much we take normal life for granted and how that normalcy of teenagers is now the benchmark of success for solar. I think for me at Fixing News, girls' education has always been something of a symbol. But also it's something that we have maybe supported more than anything else. It's maybe something that we've reported on more than anything else. It's something that forms, I think, part of the ID.

of Fix the News. And within Girls' Education globally, I think that Solo itself is the symbol that kind of shines brighter than almost any other. Just in terms of what it represents, in terms of what they've had to do, in terms of the sacrifices that they've made, and also in terms of the impact that girls' education can have. And it is one of the greatest ways to redress so many of the inequalities and so many of the issues that we face in our world.

That's why it was so. such an honor to speak to someone like Shabana. It is why we continue to follow that story of Solas so, so closely, and we will continue to do so going forward into the future. This is not the last time we'll speak to Shabana. I mean, we are so fortunate to have them as one of our giving partners. And I say that intentionally, what a privilege it is that we get to step inside these stories for whatever amount of time we can. And I agree, I am just, I am so proud of of this partnership because doing what they do, it takes an extraordinary amount of commitment and work and also money.

If anybody out there is listening, we will put links to how you can support solar. It's a boarding school that operates 365 days a year. There is no going home for these girls. So they are on campus that whole time. We know there are a lot of podcasts out there. It means a lot to us that you chose this one. It's made possible by our paying subscribers.

So if you're one of them, a big thank you. And if you want to support what we do, you can find us at fixthenews.com. This show was produced by Amy Rose with audio by Anthony Badalato from Here That. It was made in Australia on the lands of the Guttagal, Wurundry and Waiwerong peoples.

If you liked it, hit subscribe, leave a review or send it to someone you love who needs to hear us. Thanks for listening.